who relied on shrimping for their income. As was the case with the other two films, this initiative begins as something organized by a group of private individuals. In this case, the fishermen raise money to hire “experts, scientists, to investigate” the cause of the decline in the shrimp population. Although this problem is, first, an environmental one, the use of close‐up of the fishermen’s faces suggests that it is the interpersonal conflict that is most critical here. Medium and long shots of the private investigators show them collecting water samples and determining that the factory pollution has hurt the food supply for the shrimp. After learning this news, the fishermen approach the plant manager, who is unsympathetic to their plight.
The fishermen’s first response is to destroy the plant – as the narrator notes, “these are simple people. Violence seems to be their only solution” – but then one fisherman, identified as a veteran, suggests a democratic solution instead. Once again, the local government, here identified as the “Board of Selectmen,” is offered as the institution that can resolve this conflict. The film’s reference to a governmental structure most common in New England is only further evidence that there was little thought given to the production location of Social Change, which is a shift from both earlier CAD films and, in particular, those made by the OWI and the CI‐AA, which wished to explore the particularities of American places and people. At the meeting, the town’s elected officials realize that, as the narrator observes, “what began as a dispute between two small groups in the community has grown into a recognition of a basic evil, menacing the entire community,” and must be addressed by the town, which now plans to build a “sewage disposal plant” with taxpayer dollars. Instead of this action being seen as absolving the factory of any responsibility for its own pollution, the narrator argues that collectivizing the cost of pollution benefits all. The film ends with a shot of three fishing boats on the water, suggesting that the waters were made safe again by the government’s action.
Small‐Town Films as Local Films
In an October 1950 report by the Reorientation Branch for its stateside operations supporting the occupation of Japan, the United States government boasted of its production of “original documentaries” for use overseas. The chart depicts an explosive growth in film production, from just one movie in fiscal year 1947, to 5 the following year, 12 in 1949, and 38 in 1950.31 Not surprisingly, the report repeats some of the same language that first appeared in McClure’s 1947 plans for documentary production, suggesting that films discussed in this essay were in keeping with the mission of the CAD. The report also underscores the importance of the cinema to military objectives in Japan, praising the medium for “its power to attract and hold attention, stimulate thinking and discussion and to leave lasting impressions.”32 Although a number of scholars have commented on the value movies had in this occupation period, the “original documentaries,” including those described here, were particularly indicative of what the Army expected the cinema to accomplish – to show people in occupied countries how they could transform their civil society by adopting American democratic traditions.
While other scholars have noted that presenting the “small town” as the face of American democracy was a strategic choice designed to benefit the US government in the post‐war period, the films discussed in this essay suggest the challenges a small town faces when it is asked to perform as an emblem of democracy in action.33 While it is unclear how involved the CAD was in the selection of the communities that were to be filmed for their productions, the people in the towns themselves were aware of the important roles they were to play in promoting American democracy, and, presumably, small‐town values, overseas. For this reason, these community‐based films are best understood not as documentaries that just happened to be produced in a particular place, but also local films, of interest to audiences because they could see people and places they recognized on screen. Unlike other local films, however, these films also had global reach, making them a rare instance in which political questions that were presented as of merely local interest were seen as indications of how small communities and nations around the world would engage with the United States and its allies.
Although these films had a relatively short (but very wide) run in occupied countries, the prints that were given to these communities for their own use endured as moving image documents of their past. In almost all cases, these films continue to be screened, debated, and written about by local historians. Some films, such as The Cummington Story, ask communities to reflect on their own responsibilities to welcome immigrants, support democratic solutions to critical problems, or build resilient institutions.34 At the same time, the fact that these films were produced for use in a fairly limited context and, until recently, were very difficult to see, means that they are much less well‐known than the government films produced in the 1930s or during World War II.35 But they are worth revisiting, not just as a forgotten set of films produced for a particular purpose, but also as one of many instances in which the US government used documentary as both a propaganda tool and as a way to articulate, analyze, and critique its own belief system.
References
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2 Fay, J. (2008). Theaters of Occupation: Hollywood and the Reeducation of Postwar Germany. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
3 Goldstein, C.S. (2009). Capturing the German Eye: American Visual Propaganda in Occupied Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4 Immerwah, D. (2015). Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5 Kahana, J. (2008). Intelligence Work. New York: Columbia University Press.
6 Kitamura, H. (2010). Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
7 Lerner, N. (2005). Aaron Copland, Norman Rockwell, and the “Four Freedoms’”: The Office of War Information’s Vision and Sound in The Cummington Story (1945). In: Aaron Copland and His World (eds. C.J. Oja and J. Tick), 351–378. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
8 Lovejoy, A. (2018). “A Treacherous Tightrope”: The Office of War Information, PWD/SHAEF, and Film Distribution in Liberated Europe. In: Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex (eds. H. Wasson and L. Grieveson), 305–320. Berkeley: University of California Press.
9 MacCann, R.D. (1973). The People’s Films: A Political History of U.S. Government Motion Pictures. New York: Hastings House.
10 MacDonald, S. (1997–1998). The City as the Country: The New York City Symphony from Rudy Burckhardt to Spike Lee. Film Quarterly 51 (2): 2–20.
11 McCarthy, A. (2010). The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America. New York: New York University Press.
12 Sackley, N. (2011). The Village as Cold War Site: Experts, Development, and the History of Rural Reconstruction. Journal of Global History. 6 (3): 481–504.
13 Scott, I. (2006). From Toscanini to Tennessee: Robert Riskin, the OWI and the Construction of American Propaganda in World War II. Journal of American Studies 40 (2): 347–366.
14 Smulyan, S. (2007). Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid‐Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
15 Wagnleitner, R. (1994). Coca‐Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after World War II (Trans. D.M. Wolf). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Notes